Last Stop & Home Base: Oak View, CA

You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.
Wendell Berry

I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers...
Alice Walker

On Tuesday, August 20, we ended our time in Portland with Lindsay's noon-time flight back to SoCal. She was coaching and chaperoning at the annual Capistrano Valley H.S. girls cross country training camp in Mammoth. Tom drove south through Corvallis, Oregon, to Oregon State University, where his parents met exactly 50 years ago. He took the next week winding south through the rugged Oregon coast and the Redwood Highway of Northern Cal, down into civilization with stops in Sacramento, Berkeley, San Francisco and Santa Barbara.

On Tuesday, August 27, after a week of cross country training camp and recovering, Lindsay took the train to Ventura and Tom picked her up to go celebrate the end of our journey and debrief with Elaine Enns (and share dessert with fellow travel-weary sojourners Tim Nafziger and Charletta Erb!). Elaine and her partner Ched Myers (who had a speaking engagement in Sweden) have been absolutely vital to even imagining this road trip. When we spoke to them of a free summer and asked about some good ideas, they recommended visiting leaders and communities all over North America involved in the "radical discipleship" movement (more specifics on this rich tradition in our next and final posting). We literally laid out the United States road map on Ched & Elaine's kitchen table and they pointed out each and every place that they thought would be worth visiting (and they discussed plenty of places that we were simply not able to visit...alas, we only had 75 days!).

Ched and Elaine have been an irreplacable source of nurture and wisdom for us over these past couple of years. Because they live only 150 miles away (they live one hour north of LA, we live one hour south) and because Ched's 90-year-old mother lives just a stone's throw away from us in Aliso Viejo, we've had opportunities to connect with them over meals, beer & tequila tastings, slumber parties and relaxations on the beach. These times have refreshed, inspired and challenged us to live more intentionally aligned with the Gospel's call to sabbath economics, restorative justice and contemplative creation spirituality.

They possess a rare blend of personality and giftedness. Ched's extroverted intensity plays out in prophetic utterance through pedagogy and scholarship. Elaine's introverted enthusiasm is highlighted by pastoral tenderness through wise intuition and eager encouragement. Both, however, are prophetic and pastoral and both are rooted in decades of experience of challenging work and study. Ched is a 5th generation Californian, theologically trained at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Elaine is a Canadian Mennonite and received her MA in Conflict Management and Peacemaking from the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno. Both have been active in a variety of peace and justice work for decades.

They make up the core of what is the Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, focused on biblical literacy, church renewal and faith-based witness for justice. They accomplish these tasks through 3-5 day institutes, monthly webinars, speaking engagements, writing and relationship-building. Ched & Elaine are those rare leaders who listen, mindful mentors who allow space for skepticism. They don't claim to have all the answers. They live with awe and wonder at the mystery and majesty of a God found both in a blooming creation and a bleeding crucifix.

I was blown away after reading Ched's ground-breaking commentary on the Gospel of Mark (Binding The Strong Man, 1988) at the end of my seminary journey in 2008. I got a chance to meet Ched over coffee a couple of years later and Ched invited us to come up to the Ojai Valley for a weekend to meet Elaine and find retreat from work and ministry in South Orange County.

Name-dropping Ched and Elaine allowed us to connect with so many great people on this summer journey. Their ministry and experience garner oodles of respect among those committed to biblical scholarship, church work, spiritual direction and social activism all over North America. All these old friends offered so much hospitality to us, a couple of Orange County kids who had relatively little knowledge of the lives and vocations of so many of these pioneers. No longer. We have had the rare opportunity to meet so many and to see their lives up close and personal.

It has been a whirlwind journey, often times needing to pinch ourselves in the presence of greatness, sometimes waking up and wondering where the hell on earth we were. We hope to keep in touch with all of these new friends. But let's be honest, life takes over and proximate relationship become a priority. It will be the cherished memories that rise up over and over that will keep the road trip going into "real life."

I suppose sometime in October I'll be in my classroom (or a local coffeehouse) and something will remind me of the work ethic of Liz McAlister or the wide-eyed wonder of Clancy Dunigan or the energy of Sheldon Good or the warmth of Mike Boucher or the stridency of Mark Van Steenwyk or the consistency of Art Laffin. Or perhaps sometime in November Lindsay will be in the therapy room (or out at the cross country course) and she'll be reminded of the vision of Solveig Nilson-Goodin or the quick wit of Sara Stratton or the curiosity of Isaac Villegas or the dignity-bestowing of Will O'Brien or the hospitality of Wes Howard-Brook. We've already thought of so many of these heroes in the most random of moments back in SoCal.

But, of course, there's nothing quite like being in the presence of real live people who we admire and want to be like. Ched and Elaine will remain a life-line in this upcoming year of teaching and therapy work, intentional community and interpersonal relationship, writing and working with adolescents. We are deeply grateful for the authentic masterpiece of identity and vocation that their coupleship attests to.

Along with our parents and our Open Hearts intentional community, we dedicate all these blog posts to Ched & Elaine, who not only made this 75-day journey possible, but also continue to provide the blueprint and sustenance to raise audacious questions about what "radical discipleship" in South Orange County might actually look like.

Keeping Portland Weird

Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.
Thomas Merton

Portland is where young people go to retire.
Portlandia

On the morning of Saturday, August 17, we left Whidbey Island on the ferry and drove south to Portland for a 4-mile run along the Williamette River, across a couple of bridges and into the Southwest part of the city. The weather was perfect. We then drove to Newberg to participate in our very first Native American sweat lodge ceremony at the Eloheh farm administered by Randy & Edith Woodley.

Randy, a theology professor at George Fox Seminary, invited us to join their monthly "Jesus Sweat" after I met him this Spring on my trip to Portland with Ched Myers. Randy has been conducting these for the past 23 years and on this day, there were 13 of us led by Randy's 18-year-old son Young, the first time he has ever led! This was a powerful experience of prayer, song and open sharing around the circle. We spoke individually, counter-clockwise and finished each prayer or sharing with a communal "aho," the Cherokee word for "amen."

The focus of a sweat is on confession and purgation. The completely dark lodge is heated with lava rocks and symbolizes a mother's womb, where each participant has a born-again experience, emerging out of the refining heat into New Life. Each "round" of the ceremony got hotter and, by the end, we were both laying on our backs to avoid passing out.

Randy & Edith have been mentoring radical disciples and conducting retreats for years now. They are passionate about connecting their Christian faith to their Native heritage, something we continue to learn on this trip are two things that are extremely compatible, strengthening each other along the Way (both of which focus on what Seattle-based biblical scholar Wes Howard-Brook calls "God of Creation" spirituality...as opposed to "God of Empire"). While teaching, farming, writing and raising children of their own, the Woodleys infuse everything with a Gospel of hospitality and inter-connectedness. Randy gave Lindsay a copy of his recent Shalom & The Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision as a parting gift.

We got to stay with Tom's cousin, Jeff, on Saturday night in Sherwood. Jeff truly has a global vision of Life and definitely appreciates a good road trip. He has been all over the world, participating in Peace Corp missions and all sorts of other adventures. He currently works at New Seasons, an alternative grocery store (competing with Whole Foods) in Portland. He made us a phenomenal batch of his nachos bell grande out of the freebies he got from the deli the previous day.

His wife, Melissa, is a speech pathologist who gets to ride her bike to work everyday in the beautiful Williamette Valley. She missed the Saturday night festivities because she was attending the birthday party of her 91-year-old grandfather in Bend, but we connected for Mexican food in Southeast Portland on Monday. Afterwards, Jeff introduced us to his signature dessert: Stumptown ice coffee and a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie from the local New Seasons.

On Sunday, we met up with The Wilderness Way community for their Nature/Sabbath Sunday, a once-a-month hike to intentionally connect to the Source of ancient wisdom, spend time (re)connecting with each other & learning more about the history and challenges of their own watershed context.

The Wilderness Way community is committed to the biblical practices of Sabbath, Jubilee and Shalom as a community while each member is encouraged to commit to taking personal inventory of their own process of practicing the Way of the wilderness. This community has a deep structure with a beautiful liturgy focusing on LEAVING empire, LOVING one another and LEARNING the Way of the wilderness (just like Israel & Jesus) and every Sunday of the month has a different focus:

First Sunday focus: The wisdom of our lives (last year, they shared their nature autobiographies)

Second Sunday focus: The wisdom of Jesus and the Jesus movement

Third Sunday hike: The wisdom of nature/sabbath

Fourth Sunday focus: The wisdom of Sabbath, Jubilee and Shalom (learning about this wisdom more deeply, and sharing about how we are living our community practices)

Fifth Sunday focus: As the Spirit guides

We were welcomed into the home of Peter & Solveig Nilsen-Goodin and their precious boys Soren and Stig. Tom (known to the family as T-Bone) met the NGs in the Spring and Lindsay (L-Bone) was really looking forward to meeting them and participating with the WW community on a Sunday. Solveig is an ordained Lutheran minister and Peter is a junior high music teacher.

We had a great dinner, met Matt Smith and his son, Jack, heard more about the Leaven Project and related Salt + Light community, swapped life stories and then capped the night off with a dance party to the latest hits from Alvin & the Chipmunks.

Married for more than 20 years, Solveig & Peter are committed to leading their boys into the challenges of the Wilderness Way. Their authenticity and passion for neighborly hospitality and peace & justice work are clearly evident. What a perfect family to officially end our journey with.

Sleeping In Seattle

Playing God, aw nah here we go
America the brave still fears what we don't know
And God loves all his children, is somehow forgotten
But we paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago
I don't know.
Macklemore, Seattle native

A lot of people read the Bible stupidly, but that doesn't make it a stupid book.
Wes Howard-Brook, professor of Religious Studies, Seattle University

On Friday night, after a delicious Thai dinner in the surprising little college town of Ellensburg, WA, we drove two more hours and arrived in Sammamish, the home of Tom's cousin Cindy and her husband Greg. Sammamish is a town nestled between Seattle proper to the west and Snohomish Pass (elevation 4,000) to the east. Cindy and Greg live in a beautiful home at the end of a maze of roads about 15 minutes off I-90. It is what they call a "tear-down home," built in the 70s and will, no doubt, inevitably get snatched up by developers who will turn the acreage into 3-4 new homes.

Cindy is the firstborn of all the Airey cousins and is clearly the most organized and committed to staying in contact. She always makes it a point to connect with us when she comes down to SoCal for business with Boeing. In fact, I have fond memories of bonding with both Greg and Cindy on the night of April 2, 2008: we watched the Jayhawks win the national championship together at my parents' house in Mission Viejo. We are tremendously thankful for their hospitality this week and that they sacrificed their usual Saturday (sailing? golfing?) to entertain us!

On Saturday morning, we were delighted to participate in Cindy and Greg's Saturday morning ritual: sleeping in. Apparently, we had slept right through a major summer lightening storm. No surprise. We awoke to cool weather and eventually the four of us, and the energetic Kya (a mysterious collie mix), jogged through their forested neighborhood, past Pine Lake, the soapbox derby and over to cousin Larry's fixer-upper about 2 miles away. Larry and his daughters Alexa and Sydney showed off their pool, new dog and remodeling projects.

Then, it was time to party with the cousins, aunts and uncles. Coming to the Pacific Northwest is a bit like coming home to my roots. My grandfather Val Airey came to the States as a young boy just more than 100 years ago and eventually settled his family in nearby Renton to start his pharmacy business. My dad's younger sisters Kathie and Vicky (see below) still live in the area close to their children and they continue a decade-long tradition of meeting on Sunday mornings for a lakeside walk to stay connected.

On Sunday morning, we met up with Dan Jones at Seattle Mennonite Church in the north district of Lake City. Dan was a Capistrano Valley H.S. Fellowship of Christian Athletes student leader a decade ago, a fellow student at Fuller Seminary and a participant in our 2nd house church experiment back in '08-'09. He currently is the Residents Life Coordinator at his alma mater Seattle Pacific University while studying for Presbyterian ordination.

At SMC, Weldon Nisly preached a sermon on Ephesian 2:11-3:21, what Biblical scholar Tom Yoder-Neufeld calls "the greatest peace text in the entire Bible." Weldon lamented a laundry list of recent hostilities (Trayvon Martin, the Mexico/US border, the Israel/Palestine border, the Pink Mennos' missoin to bring full dignity for the LGBTQ community...and more) while proclaiming the good news that Christ has "broken down the dividing wall" (of race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, gender, etc) that separates too many of us with the hope that he will "create in himself one new humanity" to experience true reconciliation and redemption in the world.

After church, we drove east to Issaquah, the home of biblical scholar and activist Wes Howard Brook. Wes had just arrived back home the night before after 6 weeks in Australia with his partner Sue. Wes was apparently jet-lagged but no one would have guessed it. He whipped us up a pasta and salad lunch and then led us on his daily hike up Tiger Mountain.

Wes grew up as a secular Jew in Beverly Hills raised by a single mom. He went to Berkeley, became a lawyer, worked in DC for a US Senator...and then read Ched Myers' Binding The Strong Man cover to cover (has anyone else ever done this?) in the late 80s. This event catapulted Wes into a life of biblical scholarship and teaching at the Jesuit Seattle University.

Since then, Wes has done to John's Gospel what Ched had done to Mark's: recovered a socio-political reading that is more at home in the Roman imperial world of 1st century Palestinian Judaism. In addition to other writing and editing, Wes has published the ground-breaking Come Out My People: God's Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond, a full-length anti-imperial treatment of Scripture. His thesis is that, when we open the Bible, we find a competition between authors advocating for a top-down, hierarchical, dominating and triumphalistic God of Empire and those scripting a from-below, compassionate, indigenous-privileging God of Creation (of which Jesus is the fulfillment and climax).

Rumor has it that, in addition to his scholarship and teaching at Seattle U., Wes serves Sue a latte in bed every morning. With the rest of their free time, Wes and Sue host a couple of Gospel of John studies in their home. They started with John 1:1 9 years ago and they are now on John 19 (there was an 18 month review in there at some point). Each session the focus is on undomesticating the Gospel while they eat, pray and (of course) laugh. Check out Wes and Sue's spiritual direction website here.

After a lunch of prayer and story-telling, Wes led us on a hike up nearby Tiger Mountain, playing nature tour guide, Bible Answer Man and pastor-therapist all the same time. Wes even fed us snacks from the local wild blackberry bushes.

On Sunday night, Dan's wife Sara joined us for Thai food in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. Sara is in the MFT program at Seattle Pacific University. She and Dan met during their undergrad years at SPU and, although Dan still suffers from mental illness (see photo below), Sara has been a huge factor in his ability to be a functioning member of society. But seriously, these two have been incredibly busy this past year. Sara has worked full-time while being a full-time, first-year MFT student and Dan just completed a graveyard shift at the hospital (an unpaid internship for his Presbyterian ordination work) while working full-time as the chaplain at Northwest University. As always, we combined some deep dialogue with a lot of laughter.

On Monday, Pastor Weldon took us out to Persian food in the Lake City neighborhood. Weldon grew up in Iowa and, from early on, was passionate about electoral politics (a rarity in his Mennonite context). Just 2 days before my birth in 1973, Weldon felt the call to ministry, a life dedicated to a blend of prophetic preaching and peace witness. After a stint in D.C., Weldon has pastored churches in Cincinnati and Seattle. He has thrived in this urban context, while his wife longs to bring it back to the countryside as retirement approaches this November.

Weldon told us the phenomenal story of traveling to Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003. He was part of an American peace delegation with Jim Douglass, Shane Claiborne and Jonathan & Leah Wilson-Hartgrove (among others). This was an extremely dangerous mission that his church and family prayerfully sent him on. While in Iraq, the car he was riding in blew out a tire and careened off the side of the road during an air raid by U.S. forces, dislocating Weldon's shoulder, breaking bones and gashing the back of his head. The people of the local village of Rutba carried him to safety and doctors cared for him.

This Good Samaritan-Iraqi saved his life and Weldon (along with some of the American delegation) came back years later to thank him and the other members of the Rutba crew of lifesavers. The intentional community in Durham, NC (started by the Wilson-Hartgroves and Isaac Villegas) is called Rutba House to honor these compassionate, enemy-loving Iraqis.

Weldon also shared about his commitment to being a pastor, activist and monastic. He has been taking short retreats to St. John's abbey in Minnesota for many years and he was instrumental in starting up Bridgefolk, a Catholic-Mennonite peace group. As Weldon spoke, we were struck by his balanced and passionate life of pursuing a deep connection with God and service to others.

On Tuesday, we met up with our old friend Josh McQueen who, with his wife Neely, used to work in youth ministry at Saddleback Church. The McQueens moved up to Seattle a decade ago to work at Overlake, a megachurch going through difficult leadership transitions back then. Josh took us to a soulish coffeehouse in Redmond and told us the story of their conversion of the imagination. About 5 years ago, Josh started reading works by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (among others) with his brother Joe. They have continued a long-distance dialogue over the real-life implications of these ideas about God, faith and everything else there is.

Josh has challenged other members of the Overlake staff to immerse themselves in this dialogue and has led small group studies on some of these books. The McQueens (with three kids of their own) are in serious discussions to develop an intentional community under one roof, centered around practices of prayer, meetings and meals. Sure enough, this rugged commitment to deeper relationship and sacrifice is even infecting the megachurches!

Josh pointed us towards nearby downtown Kirkland for an afternoon of rest, reading, running and Thai food.

On Wednesday, we drove to Mukliteo and took the 15-minute ferry ride to Whidbey Island.

This was a much-needed 48-hour getaway for us. We slept in, caught up on some reading, played Scrabble, went for a run, caught a film at the local theater, picked blackberries, made our own food, and lounged around the little two-bedroom house that we rented off Airbnb, tucked away in the trees, just a mile from the town of Langley.

On Friday afternoon, we drove 15 minutes to the home of Marcia and Clancy Dunigan, a couple who participated in the Bartimaeus intentional community in Berkeley with Ched Myers and others back in the late-70s/early-80s. These two moved to the heavily-wooded island after the birth of their son, Kevin, in the mid-80s.

Marcia and Clancy poured on the hospitality and story-telling. We were especially interested in how they met each other, how their faith convictions evolved over time and their time in intentional community. Their unique personalities played off each other as they recanted moments from 30 years ago, ranging from hilarious to heart-rending. They took a 3 month road trip all over the US back in the late-70s and even stayed at some of the same places we have. With hours of road ahead, they lavished upon us some vitally useful gifts: some country blues gospel from Clancy (he is known as the top blues DJ on the island) and some Richard Rohr CDs from Marcia (they knew Richard back in the 70s...when no one else did)!

On The Road

The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.
John Muir

On Sunday, August 4, we left Durham, NC with the goal of getting to the Pacific Northwest as fast as we could. Lindsay will be taking a flight out of Portland on August 20 so she can get back to SoCal for the annual Capistrano Valley HS girls cross country training camp in Mammoth. On Sunday night at 9:30pm we arrived in Columbus, Ohio at the home of Joe McQueen and Kellyn Muller-McQueen.

Joe was the worship leader for Fellowship of Christian Athletes 10 years ago when Tom was the campus faculty advisor. Joe has put down the guitar and taken up some serious literary critical work, finishing up a PhD in English at Ohio State University after teaching English for two years in Japan.

Joe and Kellyn have been on a very similar spiritual-theological-political journey. In all his free time, Joe has immersed himself in reading and writing and dialogue. They have participated with Columbus Mennonite Church the past two years and are seriously discerning a move to Seattle to join Joe's brother Josh and his wife Neely (more on these two in a future post!) in an intentional community experiment. Sure enough, the Brothers McQueen visited the Rutba House in Durham for a week this year to learn from Jonathan & Leah Wilson-Hartgrove and the rest of the community about what it takes to commit to this more radical form of communal discipleship.

We stayed up until 2:30am, eating homemade smore bars and drinking beers from North Carolina, Kansas City and Michigan, talking and resonating about travels, readings, church and where the the Divine Hand will prod us next. We awoke at 7:30 and hit the road for the 2nd longest day of driving on our pilgrimage. Destination: Minneapolis.

We met our old friend (whom we met 6 weeks prior) C. John Hildebrand at Luce's Pizza in Minneapolis as the sun set over the Mississippi River. John was getting ready for a road trip of his own: he and folks from Reba Place in Chicago were meeting in just a couple of days for a trek down to the Wild Goose Festival outside of Asheville, North Carolina. WG has become a summer mecca of sorts for progressive Christians who enjoy camping out in the Southern humidity. We met a handful of others (like Sara Stratton in Toronto, the Esaus from Germany, and Tevyn East in Philadelphia) along our journey who were planning on Wild Goosing in August. Pictured below are C. John, right, Joyce and Nelson Johnson of the Greensboro Beloved Community Center, center, and Tevyn East with the Carnival de Resistance, left (featured in our previous Philadelphia post), at the Wild Goose Festival in 2011.

From Minneapolis, we traveled across South Dakota (the land of eccentric art and billboards) to Rapid City where we met Carl Meyer and Karissa Ortman. Carl first discovered the beauty of South Dakota during a Christian Peacemaker Team mission to Pierre (the capital) while in college at Goshen. Carl and Karissa joined up with Mennonite Central Committee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in Porcupine for four years (when they were newly married!). Carl served us home brew that tasted like Chimay while Karissa served us zucchini and squash from the backyard garden dipped in homemade hummus and a lovely homemade green tomato salsa.

On Wednesday morning, we met Rev. Robert G. Two Bulls at Red Shirt Table. This was the first time either of us had stepped foot on a reservation. This is beautiful Lakota land, just a few dozen miles from the awful Wounded Knee massacre of the late 19th century. The Pine Ridge reservation has the lowest life expectancy of males (48) in the Western Hemisphere outside of Haiti. The unemployment rate is 80%. This is a place of historic atrocity. Of genocide.

With the gorgeous backdrop of the Badlands and the eerie silence of the Land all around us, we sat and listened to Robert tell his Story at Christ Church Episcopal, the host site of more than a thousand Taize worshippers from all over the world this past Spring. Robert joined the Navy as a teenager, traveling to the North Pacific, China Sea & the Japan Sea on a Destroyer named USS Radford. After his proud service to country, Robert convinced the beautiful Dolores to marry him and they moved to Rapid City, just a 45 minute drive from Red Shirt Table. Robert worked long hours for decades at an auto body shop to support his wife and five children (we got to meet Twila: see below). He eventually heard God's Call to a commitment to study and service in the Episcopal priesthood.

Robert shared generously with us of his life and wisdom from decades of serving at Christ Church Episcopal. Perhaps most striking in our Time with him was the strong truth-seeking spirit woven throughout his story, reflected in a constant willingness to learn and reform whenever he came across new understandings of the Way. He sang a couple of hymns in the Lakota language for us and took us for a short tour of the church grounds. The view was breathtaking.

We planted ourselves in Montana territory for two nights, splitting the time between two university towns: Bozeman & Missoula.

On our last big travel day of the trip, we visited Tim & Stephanie Lyons (as well as their twin boys Sam and Sean and Tim's parents George and Jean) in Spokane. Tim and Tom first met each other on the 4th Grade Mission Viejo Youth Basketball All-Star Team and they roomed together at the University of Kansas. We had not been to Spokane since their wedding back in 2007. We spent good time with the Lyons catching up on life and getting to meet their two precious little boys, as they fed us generously before getting back on the road for our last 4 hour stretch to Sammamish.

No Bull In Durham

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.
Karl Barth

When we left D.C. we encountered some gnarly traffic on the interstate. Construction. Accidents. A lot of rain. We had our sights eagerly set on North Carolina, the longest leg (a whole week!) of our 10-week trip. Most of our time was spent in the historic University town of Durham, at the residence of our dear friends: The Ashworths.

We first got to really know Justin (a ThD student at Duke Divinity School) and Tiffany (an English teacher at Jordan High School) during the 2004-05 school year. We were all the adult advisors of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (later changed to IMPACT) student leadership team at Capistrano Valley High School. This was a tremendously fruitful (and fun!) year guiding and mentoring these high school students. In 2006, the four of us participated in our first house church experiment, affectionately called Tangent because of the lengthy discussion sparked by highly academic theological readings.

We joined Justin at Fuller Seminary, sitting at the feet of legends like Peter Hintzglou, Nate Feldmeth and Marrianne Mai Thompson. We still have great memories of picking Justin up at the Tustin train station at 5:45am to carpool up to Pasadena. Lindsay and Tiffany fermented into besties over coffee and Subway dates all over Southern California. They are not afraid to partake in 3-4 hour phone conversations as they've transitioned into a long-distance relationship since the Ashworth move to North Carolina in 2010.

Married in January 2007, the Ashworths have dedicated themselves to serious education and service-oriented church life. Justin is currently in his final year working with Willie Jennings, Edgardo Colon-Emeric and Stanley Hauerwas on a ThD dissertation focusing on American immigration policy, a subject that is desperately pertinent and rarely narrated in theological terms. Meanwhile, Tiffany has honed her pedagogical skills in three different schools in and around Durham. Let's just say she's been in the trenches. She's tremendously excited that this school year will be more manageable and less sleep-deprived.

Our relationship with the Ashworths is special, perhaps one-of-a-kind. Their sincerity and commitment to a life of Christian discipleship is without equal. We have a natural affinity with them seasoned with a brand of vulnerability and authenticity that is about as rare as a losing season for the Duke basketball team. We often find ourselves in deep conversations about God, faith, church, political action and just about everything else that matters in Life. These are honest, disagreements offered freely. But in the midst of differences, the respect we have for each other is paramount. We always seem to learn from each other as Love and Laughter break through the levees of ideology and preconceived notions.

When we arrived late Sunday afternoon, they had dinner prepared and we joined them at a Durham CAN (Congregations Associations & Neighborhoods) meeting. They are currently organizing around two key issues: national immigration reform and the driver's license requirement for parking passes at the local community college (many undocumented immigrants attend English classes and they have had their cars towed). These organizers clearly have their shit together. The two-hour meeting was substantive, practical and bi-lingual.

The next day we got to join the weekly Moral Monday protest, rally and march in Raleigh (the capital). MM has been rolling through the Spring & Summer (14 weeks and counting) in response to the draconian measures enacted by the North Carolina Legislature and Governor this year (the first time in more than a century that the Republicans have controlled the state house). This assault on labor, teachers, sexual minorities, women, immigrants and Mother Earth has sparked massive pushback, especially from faith leaders and religious communities all over the state. Many of these faithful activists have participated in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience and been arrested.

On the Monday we attended, all educators were encouraged to wear red. After all, the North Carolina GOP has stripped teachers of tenure, eliminated the financial reward for earning a Master's degree and so much more:

*Severely reducing targeted education funding – the budget will cut textbook funding by $77.4 million, classroom supply funding by $45.7 million and limited English proficiency funding by $6 million.

*While gutting public schools, $50 million dollars will go to unaccountable private school vouchers.

*Over 9,000 education positions will be eliminated.

*There will be no pay increases for educators. In five short years, North Carolina has gone from 25th in the nation for teacher salaries to 46th.

*The cap on class sizes will be gone.

*10,000 pre-k slots will be removed.

Tiffany and thousands of other educators in North Carolina might very well be partcipating in a strike in a few weeks.

We also got to meet Isaac Villegas, the pastor at Chapel Hill Mennonite Church. I've always respected Isaac from afar, introduced to his writing on the Menno Weekly blog. Heavily influenced by the former Westmont professor Jonathan Wilson (whose little book Living Faithfully In A Fragmented World has deeply influenced our own understanding of Christian community), Isaac was a founding member of the Rutba House, an intentional community of Christians who are committed to the poor, historically African-American Walltown neighborhood in Durham, a town with a rich history of racial segregation. Isaac was eventually called to pastor the church he had been attending during his time at Duke Divinity School. We stayed so long chatting with Isaac this particular afternoon that we also had the honor of meeting his lovely partner Katie as she arrived home from work.

On the hottest day of the week, Tiffany led us on a one mile hike through the woods just outside Durham...

And the Path led to an old rock quarry...

We joined in on the Durham Church small group Bible study on Wednesday night (Acts 10) and, a couple of days later, we connected with Tomi, a friend of the Ashworths and also a ThD student at Duke Divinity. She shared with us her Story of faith and her unique call to work for racial reconciliation at Durham Church. Our prayers extend to Tomi and the entire Durham Church community as they experiment with one of the toughest challenges of the Gospel.

On our last night together, Lindsay presented the pain and peace cycles, which are at the heart of the Restoration Therapy model designed and refined by Sharon and Terry Hargrave, Lindsay's mentors from Fuller Seminary's MFT program:

On Sunday morning, we attended Durham Church before we hit the road for Columbus, Ohio. This was a wonderful service, centered around the table of bread and wine, symbolizing the abundance and inclusivity of God's grace and love. It was an appropriate culmination of a week of celebrating old friends and making new ones (like Erin! who we got to meet at the Moral Monday festivities; see above photo).

We will deeply miss these two, but are so grateful for all the down time we got to spend participating in their world and catching up on life. I'm sure we will see them again soon...after all, Justin promised a ticket to the UNC/Duke basketball game if he gets graduate student tickets this year (I'll keep my fingers crossed):